Raspberry Pi Computer Costs $25, Plays HD Video

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is developing a very low cost Linux computer based on the ARM11 CPU. The graphics chip is made by Broadcom, and the company has claimed that the chip features double the graphical performance of the iPhone 4S. If the claims are true, then the graphics chip will be able to vastly outperform the 700MHz ARM11. In addition to claims that it outperforms the iPhone 4S, the executive director at Broadcom, Eben Upton, also claims that its chip outperforms the Tegra 2 from NVIDIA. Upton was upfront when he made the claims, stating that "I was on the team that designed the graphics core, so I'm a little biased here, but I genuinely believe we have the best mobile GPU team in the world at Broadcom in Cambridge." It will be interesting to see some actual comparison numbers when the Raspberry Pi boards become available for sale.

There have been some efforts made to back up the claims made by Upton, with a demonstration of the open source HTPC front-end XBMC running on a Raspberry Pi board at the SCALE 10x conference. There will be two versions available, the Model A and Model B, which will cost $25 and $35, respectively. As someone that has experience with programming for a variety of embedded systems, I will be watching the Raspberry Pi with eager anticipation.